Bad Day
by Grac3
Summary: Or, 'Eight Times Greg Lestrade Had a Bad Day, and One Time Mycroft Holmes Did'. A series of snapshots chronicling the relationship between Mycroft and Lestrade, from pre-Pink to TSoT. Pre-Mystrade, Mystrade and Post-Mystrade. See warnings inside.
1. A Detective Inspector Meets Two Brothers

**A.N.:** So, I wrote this for a friend, who's a massive Mystrade shipper. We were talking about how Mystrade could possibly be canon while we were revising, and I just... decided to write it.

**A.N.2:** Just for this chapter, I would like to thank Ariane De Vere for her transcript of ASiP, it was a real help.

**Warnings:** Reference to a triple murder, references to drugs

**Disclaimer: Don't own Sherlock**

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Chapter 1 – In Which a Detective Inspector Meets Two Brothers

Greg Lestrade was having a bad day.

It was only nine in the morning when he was called to a triple murder, which, after twelve hours, no one seemed to be able to gain any leads on. Three bodies had been found under a motorway bridge; obviously put there by the same person, and with times of death that were separated only by seconds, but each of the victims had been killed in completely different ways. None of the victims seemed to have any connections other than the fact that they had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Forensics had found no fingerprints, or fibres, or anything that could lead them to the identity of the killer.

Not only that, but about half an hour after he had got there, a young junkie had ducked beneath the police tape, seemingly unnoticed, and was determined to 'help'.

The young man was incredibly thin, his sternum visible as it poked out of his pale, ghostly skin. If Donovan hadn't acknowledged the presence of the young man, Greg would have been convinced that he had seen a ghost. His obvious malnourishment was also coupled with his rather impressive height: he had to be six foot at least, and looked as though he was ready to keel over at any minute if he didn't get some food in him, and quickly.

He wore a long dark coat that seemed to hang off of his thin shoulders, and his pallid face was marred with dark circles under his glazed-over eyes; it was a look that Greg had seen so many times before: whoever this man was, he was high. Yet he didn't seem to be tripping, so Greg guessed that it was some kind of stimulant – maybe cocaine.

Greg had tried to get the man off of the scene, but had failed on his own and had to get two other officers to grab him by the arms and physically drag him underneath the tape. He was halfway to the yellow line when the young man shouted out a series of facts – he called them 'deductions' – that, he claimed, would lead them to the killer.

Utterly exasperated, but intrigued, he had called for the officers to bring the man back.

"How do you know all that?" he had asked the man, looking into his thin face and, for some reason, marvelling at his rather impressive cheekbones.

"Observation," the man had shrugged, and then went off on a long rant about how he knew that all three victims had, in fact, one single connection: they had all bought a grandé latte combo from a nearby independent coffee shop within the last few days, and they had all sat on the same park bench to drink the coffee, albeit at different times. The woman with the blue coat had been sitting on the bench at three o' clock, the man with the smoker's teeth had been sitting on the bench at four fourteen, and the final victim – a man wearing lycra who apparently wasn't a cyclist, but was only wearing the outfit because he was going on the exercise bike at his gym and wanted to 'look the part' – had been sitting on the bench at half past five.

"It's probably someone who works at the coffee shop and lives near the park, as the coffee shop itself is nowhere near the park," he had finished, a smug look of arrogance plastered on his sickly face.

"Who are you?" Greg had asked, half in awe, half in frustration and tiredness.

The man had smirked. "Sherlock Holmes."

Greg had ordered a background check immediately, and found that the man was, indeed, a cocaine addict who had studied chemistry at Cambridge and was rather famous for his party trick of telling people's life stories from the most insignificant details. From what the people doing the background check could tell, he was not generally liked, precisely for this strange but remarkable ability. Yet Greg learned one more thing about Sherlock Holmes that day, something that was not from the background check: Sherlock Holmes had been completely right about everything he had said at the crime scene.

They had gone to the coffee shop that Holmes had told them the killer worked at, and found that one of their employees did, indeed, live near to the park where the bench was. Holmes had insisted on accompanying them to the coffee shop, where he practically ambushed the man with a long stream of deductions, after which the man confessed immediately.

None of the police officers present, including Greg, was entirely sure whether such a confession was legitimate, but evidence that had been gathered from the scene, the park and the coffee shop later that afternoon seemed to suggest that Holmes had caught the right person.

However, because of Holmes' interference, Greg now had to fill out much more paperwork than he would normally have to, and the thought of all of that waiting for him on his desk at Scotland Yard was not a prospect that he particularly looked forward to.

He almost felt relieved when his phone went off unexpectedly as he watched two officers walk the cuffed murderer to the squad car. Only one person rang his mobile, and what with the triple murder, the Holmes boy and the paperwork, hearing his wife's voice would be just what he needed.

Except it wasn't his wife on the end of the phone.

He didn't know who it was, only that the man on the other end sounded incredibly important and incredibly demanding. Greg could tell that, whoever this man was, he was used to getting what he wanted.

What Greg didn't understand was what this man would want with him.

"There's a car around the corner from where you are standing," the man informed him. "I am waiting."

Greg wondered if he should be worried. After all, it wasn't every day that you got a phone call from an unknown person who ordered you to get into a car – which, when he got round the corner, he saw was unmarked and had tinted windows so that he couldn't see inside. Nevertheless, he was far too tired to deal with whatever consequence he would have to face from Scary Phone Man if he didn't do what he asked, so he got into the car anyway.

He was greeted – briefly – by a rather stunning woman who only looked up from her phone to say, "Good afternoon, Detective Inspector".

He tried, in vain, to make conversation with the woman, but she kept up her stony silence and eventually he gave up.

The car drove for about half an hour, and pulled up inside a large warehouse, just inside the entrance. The door opened and a silent man wearing a suit was standing there, holding the car door open for him. The woman who had been sitting next to him had already got out, so Greg followed suit.

The warehouse was possibly the largest that Greg had ever seen – once he could see it properly, he began to doubt whether or not it was actually an aircraft hangar, although there was no aircraft in sight.

It was perhaps due to the massive size of the warehouse that the sight of the single man standing some twenty feet away from him, on his own, leaning against an admittedly rather gorgeous umbrella was slightly comical.

Even so, Greg didn't laugh.

"Good evening, Detective Inspector," the man smiled, the same man who had spoken to him on the phone.

"Good evening," he replied slowly. "I'm sorry, who are you?"

The man chuckled, a low sound that infuriated Greg to his very core. "I am the closest thing Sherlock Holmes has to a friend."

Greg sighed. He should have known that that junkie was more trouble than he was worth. Then again, he had caught a killer the police might not have been able to find for months in a matter of a few hours… But kidnapper friends? This was really a bad day.

"The closest thing?" he asked. "And what would that be?"

"An enemy," the man explained, standing up so that he was no longer leaning on his umbrella. "Tell me, Detective Inspector, do you plan to continue your association with Sherlock Holmes?"

That, Greg didn't know the answer to. He had only known the man for a few hours, but in that time the man had proved himself rather worthy of having around. That was, if his constant presence around crime scenes didn't land Greg with even more paperwork, or kidnapped.

"If you're his enemy, why do you care if _I_ want to spend time with him?" Greg asked, starting to feel as though he'd rather be at his desk at Scotland Yard doing the mountain of paperwork that was no doubt awaiting him.

"I worry about him," the man assured him, "_constantly_."

Greg huffed indignantly. "Enough to kidnap people? You do realise I'm a police officer?"

The man chuckled again. After the day that he'd had, it was all Greg could do not to punch him in the face.

"Of course I know that you're a police officer, Detective Inspector. I know that you're in your early forties, I know that you've been married for twenty years and that you have two children who have both left for university already – twins, am I correct? But they didn't go to the same institution of higher education. No, only one of them got into Oxford, the other had to go to a… less prestigious university. But they are both studying the same thing: criminology. Perhaps they want to become police officers as well…

"I know that your wife is not entirely faithful, she never has been; she cheated on you twice when you were engaged, and yet you still married her? Why is that? Maybe you needed the money, after all, she is a higher class than you and earns considerably more. Maybe it was love – true love that forgave all her past sins, but now you regret your decision. Not consciously, no, and you would never regret having your children by her, but on some level a part of you longs to get away.

"Tell me, did I get anything wrong?"

Greg was stunned into silence. The man standing before him – who, after that speech, had begun to sound an awful lot like Sherlock Holmes – had got absolutely nothing wrong, and that was slightly unnerving.

"Look, how did you know all that? Have you put a bug on my phone? Have you been tailing me? What is going on?" Greg turned to the woman who had sat next to him in the car, who was standing a few feet to his right and a few feet behind him. She was still staring at her phone, her fingers still moving across the keys at the same speed that they had been before. What on earth was she doing on there that required such fast, persistent typing and would last this long?

Sensing that he wasn't going to get an answer from her, he turned back to Scary Phone Man.

"Relax, Detective Inspector, I have not been 'tailing' you," the man rolled his eyes, "I didn't know about you until a few hours ago, when my brother was so insistent on making your… acquaintance."

Greg blanched. "Your _brother_?"

The man's lips became a thin, angry line. Perhaps he was angry at himself for revealing that piece of information, but he seemed like the kind of man that never made mistakes and did everything for a calculated, pre-determined reason.

"Indeed. Sherlock Holmes is my brother, and he seems to have taken an interest in you; specifically, your work.

"As I assume you know, for it is blatantly obvious even to the most doltish of minds, he has fallen into drug use – something for which I partly blame myself – and has taken to washing away his brilliant mind with seven per cent solutions. When I heard that he had solved a most confusing murder in less than three hours, when the same case had baffled professionals for more than thrice as long as that already, I must confess that I was… glad, that he was using his brain for something other than getting deals on cocaine.

"He has spent the last three years in a stupor, getting by with nothing but his own wits and fuelled by substances. All passion had left him, and he cared for nothing but getting his next fix. Today, I observed a change in him. He was no longer merely a shadow of his former self, he _was_ his former self – admittedly still hampered by the last thing that he had injected into his veins. It is a self that I have missed, and would like to see him return to fully.

"Now, I ask again: do you plan to continue your association with Sherlock Holmes?"

Greg was stunned into silence. He had known from the moment that he had met Holmes that he was brilliant, a great man. Even so, he had not seemed like a good one, but, based on what Scary Phone Man had told him, he was inclined to blame that on to the drugs that he had somehow got into. At first, Greg had wondered if it had been the drugs that had given him this ability to deduce and reason at such an advanced capability. Now, he found out that he could, in fact, do it _in spite_ of the drugs.

Yes, Sherlock Holmes was perhaps the most annoying man Greg had ever met, and he was almost ninety per cent responsible for the bad day that he was having. But he was also a man who needed help, and who could help him in return. He had solved a murder and caught a murderer who could have gone on to take more lives.

All in all, that wasn't a bad feat for a junkie who had a kidnapper for a brother.

"Yes," he answered Scary Phone Man, with a determined nod. "He was good at the scene today, although his personal skills with the coffee shop workers left a little to be desired-"

This prompted a small chuckle from Scary Phone Man – not one that grated on Greg's nerves like the previous ones had, but a soft, nostalgic chuckle that told of fond memories of times gone by.

"-but… I like him. He needs to get clean-"

"Undoubtedly," Scary Phone Man agreed, with a small nod.

"-but when he does… yeah, I'd take him on more cases."

It seemed like such a snap decision, especially when it was one that could possibly change his life forever – for who knows how different his work would become if he began to regularly allow Holmes to… well, what exactly would he be allowing him to do? Consult? In any other situation, he would have taken more time than this to carefully consider whether or not to use his time to the advantage of a junkie.

Yet it would not only be to Holmes' advantage, and Greg seriously believed that he could get clean. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but Greg was a stubborn man, and even if he had to drag Holmes kicking and screaming through withdrawal, the man _would_ get clean.

Scary Phone Man smiled, a more genuine smile that almost didn't reach his eyes. It wasn't as though he was insincere about the smile, but more as though he merely didn't do it often enough to know how to do it properly.

"That's what I'd hoped you would say," he said. "But I do have one thing to ask of you, in light of your decision."

"What?"

The man shifted, almost awkwardly, then met Greg's eyes with a strange, almost desperate expression. "Look after him."

Greg didn't know either of the men he had met that day particularly well; not Holmes, nor Scary Phone Man. He didn't know exactly what their relationship was, and he certainly didn't have the same powers of observation that either of them seemed to possess.

Yet he did know that the man in front of him was determined for his brother to get better, to return to the bright flame that he had been before his descent into drugs. And if Holmes could solve a murder so quickly when he was high as a kite, then how much more brilliant a man would he be when sober?

Greg didn't know, but he did know that that was a man he would much like to have the privilege of meeting.

He nodded at Scary Phone Man in agreement, and left the warehouse in the car, with the silent typing woman, feeling as though maybe this hadn't been such a bad day as he had originally thought.


	2. In Which A Transgression is Forgiven

**A.N.: ***WARNING! SPOILERS FOR SERIES 3 IN THIS AUTHOR'S NOTE* I know that this is supposed to fit in with canon, and based on what Mycroft said in HLV, the fandom is going kind of crazy about how there's a third Holmes brother out there, and in this chapter, Sherlock says he's only got one brother. I think that the third child is a sister. There was no reference to the gender of the third sibling, and I just don't think it was a boy.

**Warnings:** References to drugs

**Disclaimer: Don't own Sherlock**

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Chapter 2 – In Which a Transgression is Forgiven

Greg Lestrade had had a bad day.

He had been getting nowhere with the serial killer suicide case, and Sherlock was being as annoying as ever. He was showing off a lot more on this case than he had been lately, though Greg guessed that was because he had a new audience – a particularly adoring new audience.

When Sherlock had turned up at the Brixton scene with John Watson, Greg didn't know what to think of him. He certainly had to be something special if Sherlock was insistent on having him there, but after four suicides – even with one that now had a note – he was desperately tired and just wanted to get home.

Unfortunately, that hadn't been an option for him, and he had been forced to do a fake drugs bust at Sherlock's new flat – which was even further away than his old one had been, an annoyance in and of itself – which the detective had then wandered off from.

Now, he was standing at the scene of _another_ crime – this time with the killer being the victim – which Sherlock and John were leaving the mess of with him.

When Greg had learned the particulars of the shooting, and Sherlock had given him his predictions about the shooter, he had known almost on instinct who had killed the cabbie. Not that Greg said anything; he didn't particularly want to get the first friend that Sherlock had made in several years jailed after they had only lived together for a few hours. Not only that, but Greg had come to like John since their initial meeting in Brixton, and he personally didn't want to see him in prison.

Unfortunately, he noticed that Sherlock and John had stopped a few feet away from the police tape, and were talking to someone. There was two people standing before the Baker Street pair – a man and a woman. Greg's heart dropped as he thought about who they could be talking to: he could think of only one man whom Sherlock would stop in his tracks to talk to after solving such a difficult case, and that was the one man whom Greg _really_ didn't want to see after the day he'd had.

The man with whom Sherlock and John were talking turned to face him, and their eyes caught each other from either sides of the yellow police tape.

Greg's suspicions – and fears – were confirmed.

Mycroft Holmes.

_Oh._

_Shit._

Greg had learned of the elder Holmes' name when Sherlock had been going through withdrawal. The detective – who, at the time, was not yet really a detective, but he was close enough to being one that he deserved the title anyway – had had periods where he was delirious, unsure of where he was or who he was with.

One absolutely freezing night, when the detective had been suffering from a fever that had called for Greg to hold ice packs against Sherlock's clammy forehead and marvel at how they melted and dripped despite the cold outside, Sherlock had seemed to revert to childhood. He kept mumbling about pirates and the seven seas, and at one point he had called Greg 'Mycroft'.

Greg, knowing that it was probably best to play along with him, had pretended to be this person – whoever he was. He didn't have to wait long for the delirious detective to reveal to him just who this person was.

"You're the best brother ever," he had drawled as he absentmindedly ran a hand through Greg's hair. "Not jus' cause you're my only brother. Because it's true."

The real Mycroft – whose speed at attaining information bordered on the terrifying – knew instantly what had occurred between the aspiring detective and the detective inspector, and didn't take particularly well to Greg finding out what his name was. The next time Greg had seen Mycroft, he had made it clear that under no circumstances was he to tell anyone exactly who he was.

Greg had never been particularly scared of Mycroft. He recognised his authority much like a student recognises the authority of a teacher, but he was one of those teachers that, regardless of the power he held, he couldn't seem to be able to take seriously. While he was well aware of the danger that Mycroft could possibly cause him, he felt safe in the knowledge that, as long as he was still important to Sherlock, the elder brother wouldn't touch him.

That was, unless he didn't keep his word that he had given in the warehouse all those years ago.

Greg watched the scene from a distance as Sherlock and John walked off with smug swaggering strides, and Mycroft and his assistant watched them. Greg thought about trying to find somewhere to hide, where he wouldn't be at the receiving end of a scolding from the elder Holmes. He dismissed that action as cowardly; he was a detective inspector, not a naughty schoolchild, and besides, even if he could evade Mycroft tonight, the man would find him sooner or later and tell him what he wanted to say.

As Sherlock and John disappeared from view, Mycroft and his assistant turned around. The former began to walk over to the police tape, while the latter stayed behind, still typing on her phone. Even so, Greg had no doubt that she was paying very close attention to all that was going on around her.

Greg watched and waited as Mycroft lifted the police tape and ducked under it; an officer nearby seemed to think about telling him that he couldn't do that, but – presumably realising just how important the man who had just passed him was – drifted away again and quickly got on with something else.

Just as Greg had suspected, Mycroft walked straight up to him and tapped his umbrella on the ground with an air of finality, his features fixed in a disappointed scowl.

"Good evening, Detective Inspector," he drawled in that smooth voice of his.

"Evening," Greg nodded, not wanting to say his name out loud in public for fear of retaliation – he was in enough trouble already.

"How much do you know of what transpired here tonight?"

Greg shifted uncomfortably, finding it difficult to meet the man's eyes. "Well," he began slowly, trying to find a way of telling Mycroft everything he knew that still painted him in a positive light. "The killer turned up at Baker Street earlier this evening, and Sherlock went with him. They came here, they talked, the killer shared information about how he was killing his victims and showed Sherlock the pills that he had been using."

Mycroft nodded. "One poisonous pill, one neutral pill. And then?"

Greg opened his mouth but no sound came out. He stood there flapping like a fish before he mentally slapped himself around the face and continued in a voice that was slightly squeakier than he normally would have talked. "The killer was shot from another part of the building. He died a few moments later."

"And what about the pills?"

Greg gulped. "S-sorry?"

Mycroft sighed and rolled his eyes. "The pills. There was one poisonous and one neutral; you have already said that the killer showed both to Sherlock. What happened to them?"

Greg cleared his throat, if only to buy more time to come up with a story with enough truth in it that he could still get out of this conversation without feeling completely stupid. "Well, Sherlock had them both."

For a moment, Mycroft didn't react. His lips thinned into a sharp line across his face, and he looked down at Greg with hooded eyes, a glare that sent shivers down the Detective Inspector's spine.

"If it were not for this shooter," he began in a low, dangerous voice, "would my brother have died tonight?"

Greg had known this was coming since he had first seen Mycroft across the scene. He still hadn't found an answer that would suit them both, so he decided to go for the truth.

"I-it's possible," he admitted, interrupting Mycroft before he could rebuke him. "It was only a fifty per cent chance, though! And knowing Sherlock, he had the right pill anyway-"

"We cannot be sure of that though!" Mycroft snapped. He took a deep breath, as though calming himself down. "You promised you would look after him."

"He ran off!" Greg exclaimed, throwing his arms out to the side before dropping them again.

Mycroft said nothing, his eyes moving across Greg, deducing. It was a gaze that Greg recognised, one that both of the brothers had given him, but that didn't make it any less uncomfortable.

"Alright," he conceded slowly.

Greg blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"You cannot be responsible for everything." Mycroft straightened himself up to his full height. "Good evening."

He turned and began to walk away, leaving Greg standing in the middle of the road feeling utterly confused.

"Don't you have some work to do?" Mycroft called back, swinging his umbrella as he made his way back over to his assistant.

"Who was that?"

Greg was caught off-guard by the new voice that suddenly appeared on his right. He turned and saw Donovan watching the strange man leave.

"Er…" Greg hummed, "just… someone. Don't you have some work to do?" he asked, turning fully to her.

She raised her hands in mock surrender and backed away.

"Alright, alright. Suit yourself."

When Greg turned back in the direction that Mycroft had left in, he, his assistant, and the slick black car, had all disappeared.


	3. In Which the Whiskey is Blamed

**Warnings:** Drinking, references to infidelity

**Disclaimer: Don't own Sherlock**

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Chapter 3 – In Which the Whiskey is Blamed

Greg Lestrade had had a bad day.

It had been a week since the disastrous Christmas party at Baker Street, when he had been... _informed_ of his wife's latest infidelity. He had honestly believed that they could work it out this time; that they were moving forward.

It would seem that he had been wrong.

Greg was on his third whiskey of the evening when he looked up at his phone, lying on the glass coffee table before him. He was slouched on the sofa of the flat that he had moved into when he and Louise had separated. She had moved into that same flat with him when they had decided that they would try to work things out. She had gone out a few hours ago, citing a 'girl's night out' with a couple of friends. He doubted that was where she was really going.

The bottle of whiskey was sitting on the coffee table next to his phone, already half empty when it had been full only half an hour before. He rolled the glass in his hand as he stared at the device atop the glass table-top, wondering if he should pick it up.

He had heard stories of drunk dialling in the past. He had known many friends to have fallen into that trap: calling up an ex, having had one too many, and then rambling on until it got uncomfortable for the one person in the conversation who was unlucky enough to have to endure the ordeal sober, and they hung up.

Greg had always considered himself good at holding his alcohol. He never got roaring drunk, no matter how much he seemed to drink in a single night, and he was blessed with never really getting hangovers. He was surprised he had been allowed to last this long with this incredible ability without being kidnapped off the street and taken in to be studied by scientists.

As a result, he was fairly certain that he was rather immune to drunk dialling. If he never lost his head when drunk, then why would he want to make a devastatingly bad decision and call someone up that he really shouldn't be talking to at that time, and certainly not in that state?

Why, then, did he want to call someone up?

He fought the urge to pick up his phone and scroll through his contacts for as long as he could – for he only knew that he wanted to ring someone; his mind had not yet settled on whom. Eventually, however, he lost the battle, and reached over to pluck his mobile off of the table-top.

He considered ringing his wife, catching her in the act. But was that a conversation he really wanted to have over the phone? He wasn't nearly drunk enough to be able to handle something like that.

If he rang Sherlock, he would just get shouted at. Not the kind of thing he was looking for.

John had enough to deal with already.

It wasn't until he had begun to properly look through his contacts that his eyes fell on the name of the one person whom he thought would be a good idea to ring at this time. He wasn't sure how much of this decision was being influenced by the amber liquid flowing through his veins at that moment in time, but nevertheless, he found himself really wanting to talk to Mycroft Holmes.

He honestly didn't remember dialling the number, or even holding the phone up to the side of his head; all he remembered was hearing _that_ voice over the phone, the voice that suddenly sounded rather more appealing when it was heard through whiskey earphones.

"Detective Inspector, to what do I owe the pleasure?" Mycroft asked suavely after he answered on the second ring.

"She's cheating on me!" Greg wailed through the phone, not completely understanding why he sounded so pathetic.

There was a pause on the other end of the line, before, "Ah."

It was only a mere word – well, in actuality, it was really only a mere noise – but there was a lot said in that noise, and Greg wasn't nearly drunk enough to miss its hidden meaning.

"You knew!" he cried, now accepting of his new tone of voice, pitiable as it was. He could always blame the whiskey. "You knew and you didn't tell me!"

Mycroft sighed. "I didn't think it was my place."

Greg couldn't think of a comeback to that. He settled for a stubborn, rather childish, mumble: "Well, you could have told your brother that."

Greg slumped further into the fabric of the sofa – if that was even possible – and found himself deeply desiring of the grey material to swallow him up altogether. He had no want to carry on with this charade. As long as he tried to make things work with Louise, it would only get worse, and why should he have to put himself through the pain of knowing that she was still cheating on him again and again? Why did he always go back to her, when she proved herself time and time again to be bad news?

"That," Mycroft began, "is easier said than done."

"He'd probably listen to John," Greg muttered, and realised instantly that it was possibly one of the worst things he could have said in this situation. He thought of blaming it on the whiskey, but even the whiskey couldn't take the fall for something as low as that.

Despite lacking the brothers' impressive skills of deduction, Greg had noticed one thing about Mycroft since John had moved in with Sherlock, and that was that the elder didn't seem to get on well with the ex-army medic. It wasn't that he didn't like him; he seemed to admire and respect his loyalty and bravery. It was more as though he was jealous of him. John could persuade Sherlock to do things for his own good, or to not do things for the same reason, and he would always get listened to. Were Mycroft to attempt the same feat, he would be thrown out of the flat on Baker Street with a torrent of insults.

In a way, Greg almost felt sorry for Mycroft. It wasn't fair that he was being rejected so harshly by his own brother, but there were rifts in that relationship far too deep for them to ever be properly healed now. They could attempt to glue the fissures back into one piece, but the cracks would still be there, ugly mars on the surface that would always be ready to crack open again.

"S-sorry," he quickly added, taking another swig of whiskey. It didn't make him feel any better. "That was uncalled for."

"Yet, it is true," Mycroft said sadly on the other end of the line. "Sherlock does not listen to me any more than he did his teachers. But that is another issue. I believe we were discussing your wife."

"Oh, yeah…" Greg finished off his glass of whiskey and placed it on the table, firmly fighting the urge to pour himself another one. "She, er… she's gone out again tonight. 'Girl's night', apparently. I doubt it. She's probably off seeing that… that… that PE teacher."

"So you're staying at home and getting drunk?" Mycroft asked, sounding slightly amused.

Greg shrugged, momentarily forgetting that Mycroft couldn't see that over the phone. "Something to do. Something to take my mind off my aching heart!" He fell back onto the sofa, now lying across it with his feet on one arm and his head on the other, dramatically bringing his arm across his body in a sweeping motion to lay his palm across his heart.

For some reason, this elicited a noise that Greg didn't think he would ever hear in his entire life: Mycroft Holmes chuckled.

It wasn't a sinister chuckle, or one that spoke of impending doom, or the kind that was the last thing people would ever hear. It was a genuine, heartfelt sound: the kind that rumbled in your chest and reverberated across your vocal chords until it emerged from your mouth.

It was… beautiful.

Greg was beginning to think that the whiskey was to blame for a lot tonight.

"Is that the wisest way of going about it?"

"I don't know," Greg slurred, dropping his arm back down on the sofa by his side. "It seemed appropriate at the time."

They lapsed into silence, one that was fairly awkward. It was another thing that Greg wouldn't ever have been able to foresee: there was nothing about Mycroft Holmes that suggested that the man was capable of feeling the emotion that mere mortals gave the name 'awkward' to. Greg had no doubt that he would be able to make anyone else feel awkward at any given moment, but to actually be participate in the awkwardness himself?

Could he blame _that_ on the whiskey?

Suddenly, Greg came to a realisation that sobered him immediately. He supposed that, on some level, he had always known that it would come down to this, but he had supressed it, kept it at the back of his mind in order to procrastinate as much as possible, until that time when he could no longer ignore it.

It would seem that that time had come.

He sighed loudly, wiping his hand over his face and dropping it onto his stomach. "I have to confront her, don't I?"

Another moment's quiet.

"I am not an expert in these areas, Detective Inspector," Mycroft began, but was interrupted by a spurt of laughter.

"I never thought I'd see the day when Mycroft Holmes would admit that there was an area he was not an expert in," Greg laughed.

"'In which he was not an expert'," Mycroft corrected with a grumble; he ignored Greg's more insistent laughter and continued, "but I would think that… yes. That is the way that this has to go."

Greg's laughter subsided once more. A dull, almost depressing silence fell between them, only broken by the ringing in Greg's ears.

"Okay," he sighed, and sat up. He glared at the whiskey on the table. This was all the whiskey's fault. "I'll talk to her."

"Good luck," Mycroft bid, and hung up.


	4. In Which Twenty Years Comes to an End

**A.N.:** Okay, I know it already says this in the warnings below, but I have to say that this is one of the most angsty things I have ever written, and I found it quite uncomfortable to write. I may be less than used to writing stuff like this which probably makes it feel worse than it maybe actually is, but I just had to let you know that I think this is quite unsettling, just as a warning.

**Warnings:** References to infidelity, angst

**Disclaimer: Don't own Sherlock**

* * *

Chapter 4 – In Which Twenty Years Comes to an End

Greg Lestrade had had a bad day.

Three days had passed since his drunken phone call to Mycroft, and he still hadn't spoken to Louise. He felt like a coward for having put off the inevitable for so long, so he had decided that tonight would be the night. When Louise returned from yoga on that Tuesday evening, he was standing in the kitchen with his serious face on.

Louise and he had been together for what seemed like forever. They had met in university and, despite a brief period after their graduation when they had fallen out of touch, they had married relatively soon after they got together.

Twenty years and two kids later, their up-to-that-point rather blissful marriage had crumbled at the seams. Maybe it had been the twins moving out to go off to university themselves that had torn them apart. Maybe it was Greg's long working hours. Maybe it was something else.

Their relationship had never been the same since the first Christmas after the kids had gone. They had fought an awful amount of times and never seemed to be at peace. Even the times when they had been acting civil with one another, one of them had an argument from some time ago ticking away in the back of their minds, ready to burst forth whenever it took a fancy to creating some mayhem.

They had separated just before the kids finished uni, and they had been on-and-off since then. There had been extraordinarily good times; there was the one summer when Greg had moved into Louise's new townhouse and they had almost fallen in love with each other again.

Almost.

But the good times were always outweighed with the awful times, with the times when they were screaming at each other and throwing things and storming out.

Even so, even through all the bad times, Greg had always been faithful. He had never been with anyone but Louise, and he couldn't believe that she would betray him like that. He wasn't sure if the PE teacher was the first, but he was the first that he knew about, and he was determined to make it the last.

By the end of tonight, if she slept with anyone else, it wouldn't be cheating, because he wouldn't be there anymore. He had packed her things already; after all, why should he leave? This was his flat.

She would be gone by midnight.

"What's going on?" she chuckled awkwardly as she dropped her yoga bag on the sofa and saw Greg's face. "Something wrong?"

He shifted uncomfortably. He had never been good with face-to-face confrontations, not with people he knew. He didn't mind screaming at criminals and lowlifes at work, but this was Louise – this was the woman he had spent the majority of his adult life with, the woman who had given him two children. But he couldn't let this go on any longer. He had to say something.

"Who is he?" he asked plainly, deciding to cut straight to the chase. He didn't know if he'd be able to handle starting with something simpler.

Louise's face fell as she realised that she had been caught. He stepped away from the sofa and looked up at him. "H-how did you know?" she asked quietly, her voice cracking slightly.

"That doesn't matter," he told her, his throat starting to feel very dry. He had never been a particularly emotional person, and he would _not_ let her be the reason that he cried for the first time since he didn't remember when. Besides, if he were to answer that question honestly, they would get side-tracked into discussing the wondrous powers of Sherlock Holmes, and that was not what he had planned for this talk. They needed to stay on-topic, otherwise he would never finish what he had to say.

Louise licked her lips nervously, and took a step forward. Greg let her; she was still far enough away that he was comfortable with her getting a little closer. But only a little.

"Greg, listen-"

"Who is he?" he asked again, his voice a little louder, but no stronger. He was finding that he was having a rather difficult time holding it together.

"He takes the same train as me in the morning," she admitted, and Greg liked that she at least had the courtesy to sound bad about herself. "We started talking a few weeks ago, and then… I don't know!" she sighed, lifting a hand to her hair and pulling at it. "We went out for dinner, and it just… carried on from there."

Greg nodded, looking away; he suddenly couldn't bear to have her face within his line of vision any longer. "When was this?"

"I'm sorry?" she asked, and Greg had to admit that she had an excuse for not hearing what he had said; his question had come out a mere breath, and tears were beginning to well up in his eyes. He blinked them away quickly before raising his head; since his throat had started to feel scratchy, he had accepted that he would probably cry over her, but he was not going to let her be there to see it happen.

"When was this dinner?"

"Uh…" she began, her voice shaking violently. Her eyes looked wet. Greg was glad. "Maybe… about a week before Christmas?"

Greg had to take a deep breath before continuing. "So when we spent Christmas day together… you were sleeping with someone else?"

She said nothing; a tear ran down her cheek, and that was all he needed to know.

Nodding with an air of finality, he walked passed her into the bedroom that they had shared since she had moved in – he would definitely be buying new sheets and burning the old ones – and grabbing the bag that he had packed from the bed. He dumped it at her feet.

She stared down at the bag, dumbstruck, her mouth open like a guppy and tears now falling freely but silently down her face. "What-"

"You have to go," he told her, trying to sound forceful but aware that he was being less than convincing.

She looked up at him despairingly. "Greg…"

"I couldn't fit all of your stuff in there," he explained, feeling the need to keep talking if only so that she couldn't; he couldn't bear to listen to her voice anymore. "Only the essentials." He chuckled, a humourless bark. "Maybe I should have given you a toothbrush and a sock and left you without for a few days."

"You're not like that," she mumbled, shaking her head slightly.

"Yeah. I know." He looked up at her, draining all emotion from his expression. "I wouldn't cheat."

Her face crumbled, and she let out a sob. Clamping her mouth shut to prevent any more sound emerging, she scrunched up her face until her cheeks went red, wet streaks lining her skin as it bunched up. She inhaled loudly before daring to speak again, and when she did her voice was higher than normal, and cracking every other word.

"Where am I supposed to go?" she asked, lifting her hand slightly before dropping it down so that she slapped her palm against her thigh.

Greg shrugged. "I don't know! Maybe _he'll_ take you in."

She didn't try to be silent anymore. She was sobbing properly now, her chest heaving with each ugly sound. It was a moment or two before she composed herself, wiping the tears angrily from her cheeks with a rough swipe of her palm and straightening herself up to her full height. She grabbed her yoga bag off of the sofa and picked up the bag that Greg had packed for her.

"I'll come back for my other stuff later," she whispered, seemingly unable to raise her voice to any volume higher than that.

"You won't get back in here again," Greg told her. "I'm changing the locks tomorrow. You can tell me where you're staying and I'll bring your stuff round." He suddenly realised that she was probably going to take his advice to the letter and stay with the PE teacher, whom he might see if he went round there, and that was something that had no desire to happen. "Or I can… get a friend to do it," he added, with a small shrug of his shoulders, looking away again to the ground a little to his left.

There was a moment when time seemed to stop: neither of them said a word; neither of them moved. They were suspended in their positions, unable to alter this moment. In the end, it was Louise who made the first move.

"Uh…" she began, shifting the yoga bag so that it sat higher up on her shoulder. "See you."

Greg let out a puff of air, not quite a laugh and not quite an exhale. She turned to leave, when he remembered the very last question that he had for her.

"Just… one more thing," he looked up as she stopped dead in her tracks and then slowly turned to face him once more, "the other day, when you were at a 'girl's night'…" He let the question peter out, so she could finish it for herself.

She said nothing in response; she merely nodded.

Greg began to chew on his bottom lip, feeling tears begin to well up in his eyes once more. He felt so incredibly tired, so extremely exasperated. He just couldn't do this anymore. "Goodbye, Louise." He waved her off, turning around so he wouldn't be watching as she left. He stared at the sink intently as he listened to her footsteps getting further away, followed by the opening and then the closing of the front door.

She was gone.


	5. One Relationship is Replaced

**Warnings:** Angst, references to alcohol, slash snogging

**Disclaimer: Don't own Sherlock**

* * *

Chapter 5 – In Which One Relationship is Replaced With Another

Greg Lestrade had had a bad day.

It had been four hours since he'd thrown Louise out, and it was now one o' clock in the morning. He had considered trying to go to sleep – after all, he had work in the morning – but he knew that there was still too much adrenaline coursing through his body to allow him any real rest.

The day was only an hour old, but that hour had been filled with much the same as the previous three had: ugly, loud sobbing intermitted with attempts to assuage his grief at the definitive end of his marriage.

He had tried working out what he was going to tell the kids – what _they_ were going to tell the kids? Could he stay in the same room with her long enough to explain to them everything that had happened? Would they need both of them there? After all, they were adults themselves now, despite how much he still saw them as the four year olds he had once read bedtime stories to.

He had tried watching films, but had given up on all of them after the first half hour or so. Nothing seemed to help. He had been wandering aimlessly around the flat for what seemed like forever – starting off in the kitchen, emptying the dishwasher and reloading it before moving into the bedroom to tear the sheets off of the bed and dump them onto the floor. He had gone into the bathroom for no good reason at all and felt a desperate need to smash the mirror – an urge which he supressed, not for superstitious reasons relating to bad luck, for he felt that he'd had so much of that already, that another seven years' worth would mostly go unnoticed, but simply because he had no desire to cut his hand open on broken shards of glass.

Now, he was in the living room, on the same grey sofa that he had realised that he had needed to talk to Louise. There was no whiskey this time; he had finished that all off the other day when he had got drunk while Louise was at 'girl's night' and he had vowed that, in his new life alone, he was going to avoid the poison as much as possible. Even so, he wasn't sure if the lack of alcohol made him feel better or worse.

The one thing that was the same, however, was that his phone was sitting innocently on the top of the glass coffee table, begging to be used, even if it was just to text someone.

Who could he tell that he had finally split up with his wife? Sherlock would ask why he hadn't done it sooner, not because she had been cheating, but because marriage was a useless institution that took up the time that he should have been using to find him interesting cases.

John had enough to worry about.

History seemed to be repeating itself as he sank down into the soft fabric of the sofa. His gaze was fixed on his phone, which was all but screaming at him in the silence to make a call, to feel a voice vibrating through its hardware. When he could ignore it no longer, Greg reached for it and dialled; by the time the other person on the end answered, he had dissolved into sobs once more.

"Detec-" Mycroft began, but stopped abruptly when he heard what was happening on the other end of the line. "Gregory?"

Greg tried to articulate what had happened four hours before, but all that he could manage was greater and louder sobs.

"I'll be there in fifteen minutes," Mycroft assured him, before hanging up.

The silence that followed the phone call seemed to be louder and more unbearable than the one that had preceded it. Though the last one had undoubtedly lasted longer – for it had been about an hour since he had given up on the hope of distracting himself with a film – it seemed to drag on for an age, only serving to remind him of the dire and utterly depressing situation that he found himself in.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed when he heard the knock on the front door, though he assumed that it had been fifteen minutes. After all, when Mycroft Holmes said that he'd be there in fifteen minutes, then he would be there in fifteen minutes.

While he was glad to have company, Greg didn't feel as though he was able to get up from the sofa to let him in. He had no doubt that the British Government would have a key to his flat – after all, he probably had keys to all of the abodes in which resided those who regularly spent time with Sherlock Holmes – and hoped that if he waited long enough, that that key would get used.

Sure enough, a minute after the first knock, there was to be heard the sound of a key in the lock of the front door, and it opened a moment later.

Greg didn't look up as he listened to the sounds of the footsteps getting nearer; he had his face in his palm as tears continued to leak from his eyes, and sobs continued to escape his mouth. He heard the steps of smart shoes on the linoleum floorboards, the sound of an umbrella being propped up against the kitchen worktop, and then felt the sag of the sofa as he was joined by another.

"I assume you had the discussion we mentioned the other day," Mycroft said, and it was not a question. Somehow the matter-of-fact tone was reassuring.

Still unable to speak, Greg merely nodded.

There was a pause. "You threw her out. Good decision."

Suddenly finding his voice – and losing his dignity at the same time – Greg looked up from his hand. "What am I going to do now?" he wailed, looking around at Mycroft.

A flash of panic went through Mycroft's eyes; it was clear that he didn't usually have to deal with this kind of emotion; or, if he did, then it was because he was the one causing it, rather than the one charged with healing it. He was sitting on the other seat of the sofa with his back perfectly straight, his hands lying awkwardly on his knees as he fidgeted with the fabric of his suit as it bunched up from where he was sitting.

To his credit, Mycroft decided to say nothing, and it was probably the best thing that he could have done. Greg didn't need words of sympathy or reassurance; he just needed someone else to be there.

After another few minutes, the sobs began to die down, and Greg felt himself calming. He coughed awkwardly, his throat feeling sore and dry, a fact which Mycroft seemed to notice as he suggested making a cup of tea.

"Thank you," Greg nodded as Mycroft placed the cup down on the coffee table. He didn't feel as though he would ever be able to smile again, his face stuck in a permanent scowl. There was an awkward silence for a few moments as they sipped their steaming hot cups of tea, neither of them mentioning how it burned their lips and throats.

"How long ago did she leave?" Mycroft asked quietly.

"Maybe…" Greg began in a coarse whisper, his voice shot to pieces from crying, "four and a half hours ago?"

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Mycroft nod once and reach forward to place his cup on the coffee table. It was already empty – was his gullet made of asbestos?

"It was the right thing to do," he repeated himself, turning a little on the sofa so that he was facing Greg more. "Infidelity is a sin that cannot be tolerated by mere mortals."

Greg snorted humourlessly into his cup. "Are you saying you're not a mere mortal?" He turned to Mycroft, who smiled slightly.

"On the contrary," he murmured, "I am no larger than life than you are."

Greg placed his own cup on the coffee table – though his was still half-full (or half-empty, as it most likely was in the situation in which he found himself) – and sat back in the sofa.

"So… what would you have done?" he asked, turning to Mycroft as he folded his arms over his chest. "If you found out that your wife was cheating?"

Mycroft made a funny movement at the word 'wife', one that was almost imperceptible. He shifted slightly and looked away, his gaze falling to the ground and his eyes darkening. "I would not be as lenient as you have been," he admitted slowly. "But I am not you, and so my opinion has no bearing on this matter."

Greg blinked in surprise. He didn't think he would ever find a situation in which Mycroft Holmes didn't think that his opinion mattered; he doubted that the man had an opinion on _everything_, but surely he was a man who did not like to think himself wrong?

Mycroft seemed to read this train of thought on Greg's face when he looked up again.

"A wise man takes criticism on board," he explained.

"So you think yourself wise?"

"I aspire to wisdom," Mycroft said, "but I doubt I have yet achieved it."

Greg looked away from Mycroft, absentmindedly staring at the steam as it rose from the cup on the glass surface of the coffee table. It swirled in interesting shapes, driving all thoughts of Louise from his mind as he watched it float up into the space above the cup. He reached forward and picked up the cup, bringing the rim to his lips and taking a few long, deep sips. The tea had cooled down now, and was a comfortable temperature, but the heat still burned at the areas of his mouth that had already been offended by the boiling hot drink.

Neither of them spoke again until he had finished and put his cup back down on the table, sitting back with his feet on the seat of the sofa and his knees drawn up to his chest.

"Why did you call me?" Mycroft asked, drawing Greg's attention away from the steam that was still rising from his empty cup. The detective inspector turned, and was faced with a Mycroft who was wearing a rather strange expression on his face, as though he was confused but did not wish to show it.

Greg stared at him for a moment before he answered. "I don't know."

"The last time this occurred, you were drunk," Mycroft continued, as though he desperately needed to talk to fill the silences, as though silence was the vilest of criminals that deserved to suffer capital punishment. "Irish whiskey, am I correct?"

Greg nodded, not quite sure why he was surprised that Mycroft could tell what kind of alcoholic substance he was drunk on over the phone.

"It made a modicum of sense then. Yet now… now you are completely sober. You have many contacts on your phone who you could have called, many friends and acquaintances who would be more helpful than I in your hour of need, and yet you decided to call me."

"I don't know," Greg repeated, and somehow he found himself drawing nearer to the man next to him.

"I'm not sure what I could offer you in this situation," Mycroft carried on, his voice becoming lower with each word, and his thoughts sounding more and more disjointed. Greg was becoming certain that, as his legs untangled themselves from his arms holding them to his chest, it was not only him that was moving closer to the centre of the sofa.

"I really don't know why," Greg murmured, and suddenly their noses were touching…

And then he was lying on his back on the sofa with a tongue down his throat, and all was darkness to him, and the flat was filled with gasps and moans as hands curled around bodies and clutched at grey fabric…

"Wait, wait," Greg gasped, placing his hand on Mycroft's shoulder and pushing him back. The man was lying on top of him, his feet hanging off of the arm of the sofa.

"What is it?" Mycroft asked, his eyes fixed on Greg's lips.

"I… I've never done this before," Greg admitted.

Mycroft lifted his gaze to meet his eyes. "Neither have I."

"Well… it must be different, mustn't it? Than with a woman."

"Er…"

An awkward moment passed between them, and then Greg could practically hear the penny drop.

"Oh!" he exclaimed. "You mean… you've _never_ done this before?"

Mycroft shook his head.

"Oh…" Greg breathed. "Wow…"

"Is that a problem?" Mycroft asked.

"No! No. Just… we can't. Not for the first time, for you… Not like this."

A flash of something akin to disappointment went through Mycroft's eyes, but eventually he agreed and they sat up, readjusting their crumpled clothes and returning to their previous seats.

"How have you never done this before?" Greg asked after a moment, genuinely curious.

Mycroft shrugged slightly. "I have a busy schedule. There was never enough to time to meet anyone."

"But you took time out of your schedule to come here," Greg commented quietly.

Mycroft looked at him pointedly. "Well, it was you."

Greg felt his heart beat a little faster at that. How long had this been going on? All this time he had been trying to make things work with Louise, all this time he had been being betrayed, and he could have left so much earlier, and moved on?

"We can work this out," he assured the man beside him. "We will."

And in that moment, Mycroft didn't just smile – he beamed.


	6. In Which the Ironing is Finished

**A.N.:** This is purely for Anonymous who left a review of this story yesterday. I'd just like to say thank you, and it sucks that I can't do this privately, but it was a really nice thing to say and it really made my day, so thank you.

**A.N.2:** Also, I know that one of the genres of this story is angst, and so I would like to apologise to all the angst fans out there for the fluffiness of this chapter. It gets better - or worse, depending on how you view angst - later on. Promise.

**Warnings:** Mild bad language, slash kissing

**Disclaimer: Don't own Sherlock**

* * *

Chapter 6 – In Which the Ironing is Finished

Greg Lestrade had had a bad day.

Sherlock had been an arsehole at the crime scene today, which was nothing new, but he seemed to be on a whole new level of arsehole lately. John mentioned something about him having recently given up cigarettes, but Greg was too tired to listen properly. His last case had only finished a few hours before, and he had only managed to get about two hours' sleep – at his desk, with his head on a pile of paperwork – before he had been called out again.

Combined with the fact that a car had driven through a puddle by the side of the pavement that he was walking on while he had been coming home, which had promptly soaked him to his skin, he was having a very bad day indeed.

His mood was to be uplifted, however, when he walked through the front door of his flat and was greeted with what was perhaps the oddest scene he had ever seen in his entire life:

Mycroft Holmes was standing in his living room.

Ironing.

While wearing an apron.

"What on earth are you doing?" he chuckled, the scowl melting off of his face as he chucked his keys in the general direction of the bowl he kept just inside the front door.

Mycroft looked up from his task with a quizzical expression on his face. "I'm ironing," he answered matter-of-factly, as if he couldn't understand why Greg needed clarification of that fact.

"In an apron?" Greg asked as he went through to the kitchen to make himself a well-needed cup of coffee.

"I didn't want to risk getting anything on my suit," Mycroft called from the other room. "I have an important meeting this evening, with the French Premier."

While the kettle was still boiling, Greg walked back into the living room. He wasn't even entirely sure where the apron had come from; he didn't remember having ever owned an apron, and he had never seen Louise wear one…

"But where did this sudden need to iron come from?" he asked, taking off his sopping wet jacket and hanging it up on the coat rack just inside the door.

"There was a pile of ironing on your sofa," Mycroft answered. "It was irritating me."

Greg cast his eyes towards the sofa, upon which a pile of clothes had been dumped. He had moved the ironing pile from the ironing basket a week previously – for there was no more room in the ironing basket as he rapidly ran out of clean clothes to wear (not that he had been home a lot lately in the past week to change, because of stupid _work_) – and, without having anywhere else to put it, simply dumped it on one seat of the sofa. The pile that now sat in its place was considerably smaller than the one he had placed there the week before.

"How long have you been here?" Greg asked.

"A few hours. Freshly ironed outfits are hanging on your wardrobe door if you wish to change. I will check the CCTV of the road three streets up from here for the licence plate belonging to the silver Volvo which did that to you and make sure the owner of the vehicle has to pay a ridiculous parking fine for absolutely nothing."

Greg had to smile at that. Of course he had known what kind of car had driven through the puddle which had soaked him, and of course he had known exactly where said puddle had been.

He really loved that man.

"Thank you," he nodded as he went through to his bedroom, and found that the handles of the door of his wardrobe were overfilled with coat hangers from which many of his outfits were hanging, and – due to this overflow of clothes – others had been placed on his bed. He picked up his favourite – a grey button-up shirt with black trousers – and changed out of his sopping clothes, retrieving a towel from the en suite bathroom to dry himself off before replacing them. They were still a little warm from the iron.

When he had comfortably changed from head to toe – for even his socks had been drenched by the bastard Volvo driver – Greg went back into the living room to see that Mycroft was no longer ironing. In the wonder of being looked after so well after such a horrid day, Greg had completely forgotten that he had left the kettle boiling, and it had finished while he had been changing. Instead of leaving it for Greg to make when he came back into the living room, Mycroft had made Greg's coffee for him and was just putting the sugar in when he emerged from the bedroom.

He could get used to this.

"I assumed you wanted coffee, as your day has been less than-" Mycroft began, but he was interrupted when Greg placed his hand on his shoulder, turned him around and kissed him.

"Er…" the taller man began when Greg had pulled back, turning an adorable shade of bright red.

Greg chuckled, taking the mug of coffee from the worktop and blowing on the surface of the liquid before taking a cautionary sip. "You didn't have to do that."

Mycroft's brow furrowed in confusion. "The kettle had finished boiling while you were in the other room; if the coffee had not been made then, the water would have cooled by the time you began preparing your beverage, and that is not desirable-

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

Greg smirked. "Sometimes you don't realise just how similar you and Sherlock are."

A disgusted expression crossed Mycroft's face. "Don't say that."

Greg laughed, taking another sip of the delicious coffee – more delicious than he could ever have made. "Sit down, I'll do the rest of the ironing. There isn't that much left." Greg looked over Mycroft's shoulder at the few pieces of clothing that now made up the ironing pile.

"Don't be ridiculous, I may as well finish, you need to sit down."

"You've already been ironing for hours! I'm telling you, I'll finish!"

"And I'm telling _you_, you have had a bad day and you need to sit down and drink your coffee."

"I don't do everything you tell me."

Mycroft smirked. "You're the only one who doesn't."

"What about Sherlock?" Greg asked, placing the mug of coffee back down on the worktop. It was still a little too hot for frequent sips to be taken. "He never does what you tell him."

"He does eventually," Mycroft explained. "He makes a show of defiance, but only because he is a child."

An awkward silence fell between them at the mention of the 'c' word. They had been dating for six months now, which Louise wasn't happy about, and in that time they both believed that their relationship had reached sturdy ground. They didn't see each other every day – for they both had time-demanding jobs that meant they couldn't enjoy such luxuries – but they had been to lots of places together, and were enjoying the time that they did spend together.

It was because of this that Greg had suggested possibly upping the ante. While six months was far too soon to be discussing most of the things that couples usually discussed – such as moving in together or, when it was legal for them, marriage – there was one thing that Greg was anxious to happen, and he would prefer it to happen sooner rather than later.

"Speaking of children," he began slowly, reaching up to Mycroft's lapels. "When are you going to meet mine?"

All of a sudden, Mycroft became incredibly fascinated by the marble effect on the kitchen worktop. He drummed his fingers on the surface in the way that he usually did when he was nervous – a trait that Greg was sure he was the only one who had the privilege of seeing in the Great Mycroft Holmes – and sighed quietly.

"Gregory…" he began.

"No, really," Greg nodded, folding his arms over his chest. "You need to meet them, Myc."

"I know," Mycroft sighed, wiping his palm across his forehead. "But…"

"What's wrong? What are you so worried about? They already know about you, I told them ages ago."

Mycroft dropped his arm to his side, then slowly looked up again. "What if they don't like me?"

Now, _that_, Greg wasn't expecting. He was stunned into silence for a few moments, feeling his eyes widen in disbelief. He stared into Mycroft's eyes for a moment, seeing the very real and very terrifying fear and vulnerability within them. He had to mentally slap himself before he could reply.

"That's ridiculous," Greg said, and he couldn't help but accompany it with a little snort of laughter. "You are the most powerful man in the country – quite possibly the most powerful man in the world – and that is something they will find very cool. Besides, even if they don't like you, what exactly will that change? They're in their twenties, they're not little kids, if they don't like you, they'll just have to accept the fact that I do."

"I have no wish to get between you and your children."

Greg pursed his lips, unable to think of a suitable comeback to that point. He couldn't exactly deny the fact that there would be a problem if the twins didn't like Mycroft, but at the same time, this relationship would never work unless they met at some point. Greg had already told them both about how he was dating again, and that he was dating a man; neither of them had expressed any qualms about that, and Greg liked to think that he was rather adept at reading the two children whom he had raised – even if he was no Sherlock Holmes. He had even told them a few things about him, like his gorgeous three-piece suits and the fact that he had a very important job that he couldn't exactly explain to them, but which made him incredibly powerful.

From what they had heard, they had seemed to react well. Greg could not see why they wouldn't like him, but one could never tell. This situation was full of too many uncertainties, too many variables, the outcomes of which could never be properly calculated, and Greg supposed that it was perfectly normal to be nervous about meeting your boyfriend's children, no matter how old those children were. He could only be reassuring.

"You won't," he told Mycroft forcibly. "Don't think like that." He lowered his hands from the man's lapels, and wrapped his hand around the coffee mug – which had by this time cooled down enough for him to not have to hold it by the handle. Mycroft was still looking slightly disbelieving, but Greg hoped that if he brought up the subject enough then he would agree to go to dinner or something with the three of them.

Louise would not be invited.

"Now, haven't you got some ironing to do?" Greg asked cheekily, his mouth twitching up in a smirk.

"See, you _do_ do what I tell you," Mycroft smiled, though there was still a ghost of nervousness in the corners of his eyes.

"Just this once," Greg told him, taking his coffee and sitting next to the immensely diminished ironing pile.


	7. In Which Sherlock Lives

**A.N.:** Thank you to Ariane De Vere for her transcript of The Empty Hearse.

**Warnings:** Reference to suicide, blood, grief, reference to drinking, spoilers for Many Happy Returns

**Disclaimer: Don't own Sherlock**

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Chapter 7 – In Which #SherlockLives

Greg Lestrade had had a bad day.

The past eighteen months – the time since Sherlock had died – had been as devastating as they had been unforeseen. No one had expected that the detective – who loved himself more than anyone or anything – would do something like commit suicide.

Greg had found out a few hours after it had happened. He had got a call from Molly Hooper asking him to come down to Bart's. She had sounded distressed, but, at the time, he hadn't known why.

It hadn't been long until he'd found out.

When he got to the hospital, he saw the blood on the pavement that several people in light blue scrubs were still scrubbing off of the stone. It was enough for Greg to know what had happened, but not to whom it had happened.

On its own, the blood did not perturb him in the slightest; some pools of blood on a pavement were by no means the worst thing he had ever had to deal with in his job. But then he had seen who was sitting on the pavement a few feet away, leaning against the wall and looking as though he had lost his entire world…

Greg had never seen John Watson cry before. The ex-military medic had always seemed so strong, so resilient. To see him, staring wide-eyed and transfixed as uniformed men and women wiped blood off of the pavement before his very eyes… well, after that, Greg knew exactly whose blood it was.

He had walked over to the army doctor, who hadn't seemed to have noticed his presence. Numb, Greg leaned against the wall and slid to the floor himself, not caring about how dirty the ground was, or how uncomfortable the wall was. He, too, stared at the blood as it disappeared, as they wiped away what remained of a great man from the place he had fallen.

It was another hour and a half before John could face telling Greg what had happened. By this time, they were in the hospital canteen – after seeing Sherlock's cold, lifeless body lying in the morgue – and were nursing steaming cups of the strongest and least flavoured coffee in the world. John told him how he had stood in the middle of the road, how he had held his phone to his ear and listened to the last words of his flatmate and best friend, and how he had watched as he had fallen, getting closer and closer to the ground…

Greg could barely handle listening to it, and he could only imagine what it must have been like to experience, to see that first hand, to listen to those words…

Maybe it was because he knew that John needed him at that moment in time, but Greg hadn't felt sad that day. Maybe it just hadn't had time to sink in yet, or maybe he was holding out for a bit of hope – after all, of all the people in the world who would do such a thing, Sherlock would be the last. It had to be some kind of sick game with the criminal, Moriarty. The next day they would be getting a call from him, or he would burst through the door of the flat at Baker Street and announce that it was all a hoax, that it had only been necessary for a couple of hours.

Then he remembered the body that he had seen lying on that table in the morgue. It had been broken, and battered, and… well, _Sherlock_. Right down to the freckles on his slender neck. His hair was matted slightly with the blood that had flowed from the fractures in his head, and even though he hadn't been there, Greg could almost picture that body lying on the ground next to the hospital, having fallen from its rooftop and landed where the blood had been wiped from.

Surely even the great Sherlock Holmes couldn't fake something like that.

Could he?

After a while, John had asked Greg to leave him alone. Greg wasn't entirely sure how comfortable he felt at doing that, but after half an hour of trying to convince John to let him stay, or to stay the night at Baker Street so that he could keep an eye on him, he decided to give up and go home.

As soon as he walked through the door, it hit him:

Sherlock Holmes, the most brilliant man he had ever met, was dead.

He didn't bother to take his jacket off.

He didn't bother to take a step any further into the flat.

He didn't even bother to throw his keys in the bowl next to the front door.

He just sank to his knees, and wept.

Greg didn't know how long he had stayed there, but he only moved when he was sure that he was in danger of dehydration. His knees protested at being moved after being pressed into the floor for so long, but he had to do something. He couldn't stay there all day.

Wiping the tears from their eyes – a fruitless task as more began to flow instantly – he went into the kitchen to make some more coffee; hopefully this one would be better than the sludge provided by the hospital. Instantly, his mind was taken back to the last time he had felt like this in his flat: the night he had thrown Louise out.

That night seemed so long ago, though it had really only been a few months. He was with Mycroft now, and the old life that had contained Louise now only seemed like a bad memory. Even so, he reasoned that everything he had got out of his relationship with Louise had been good: if he had never been with Louise, he never would have had the twins. If he had never been with Louise, he would never have been able to break up with her and then get together with Mycroft.

He realised that he had an all right lot in life; it must have been better, anyhow, than whatever Sherlock had had to deal with, if it had led him to that rooftop.

A wave of despair rushed over him, and without him even realising it, his hand was reaching into his pocket for his phone. When he felt like this, there was only one person he could call.

"You've heard." Mycroft didn't say 'hello'. He didn't wonder who was calling him (not that he ever did). He didn't try to ignore the elephant in the room. He merely cut straight to the chase, acknowledging instantly this terrible news which hung over them. He sounded exhausted, but not exactly grieving; Greg knew that Mycroft processed emotions better than his brother did – had – but in some ways, he was still not as adept at dealing with such things as depression and loss as most people were. He sounded as though he was bottling something up, and Greg knew exactly what it was.

"Sherlock…" Greg breathed, as though saying his name could bring him back. He gulped as more tears threatened to fall down his face. "How did you find out?"

There was a pause. "I… knew."

Greg sobbed at that, even louder than he ever had since he had first seen those blood stains on the pavement. Of _course_ Mycroft had known, he had probably known from the instant that Sherlock had fallen off of that roof, from the moment that the end of his life had been decided. Greg wondered if he would just know if his own brother died. Would there be some sibling connection that reverberated through space and time, some unseen force that would tell him, as it obviously had told Mycroft, 'You no longer have a brother'?

"I'm coming."

When the phone clicked with the sound of Mycroft hanging up, Greg let the device slip through his fingers and clatter to the floor. He didn't bother to check to see if there was any damage, not that he would care if there was: what were a few cracks in his phone when there were irreparable cracks in the head of one of the only friends he had ever known?

Yet, no matter how awful it had felt on that day, it had got better as time went on. He had gone through the five stages of grief – as had John, and as had Mycroft, even though the latter went through it more privately – and then he realised that the sun had never stopped shining, and the world had never stopped spinning, even though it no longer contained the brilliant, enigmatic person that had been Sherlock Holmes.

Which was why, eighteen months later, Greg was just a little fed up with Anderson's insistence that Sherlock could have been alive.

Maybe it was the fact that he had hung onto the hope that he had faked it somehow when he had first found out what had happened that he was so frustrated with the man's continued attempts to prove that Sherlock had not died on that fateful day. Maybe he was just dismayed at what this obsession had made of the man with whom he had worked for so long. For all that Sherlock had made fun of him and put him down, Anderson was not a completely stupid man. He, admittedly, was a bit of an idiot, but it took brains to become a forensic investigator, and the man had helped the Yard close several cases over the years.

Now, he had lost his job and his wife, and spent all day poring over maps of Europe to try and work out the possible whereabouts of Sherlock Holmes. When Greg had gone to meet him in the pub that day, he had known what to expect, even though he still didn't want to have to deal with it.

It was with some dismay that Greg had walked through the door and seen the map on the table, being carefully studied by the newly bearded Anderson – who seemed to have forgotten how to shave since he started this business – and he surreptitiously ordered a beer from the bar, specifically asking for it to be spiked with a shot of vodka. It was a trick that John had taught him long ago, back when Sherlock had still been alive…

Shaking the still slightly painful thoughts from his head, Greg had taken his beer and went over to the table were Anderson sat, ready to be assaulted with theories and nonsense.

And so, that's what had happened. Anderson had gone through all of the cases over the past few months that he believed had had something to do with Sherlock, pointing to each of the many dots on his map that showed where these events had been happening. Greg had listened and argued back, but all the time, a seed of doubt was being planted in his mind.

Most of the theories that Anderson had cooked up over the past eighteen months had been complete balderdash, but this one… well, this one was starting to make sense. There was truly no human being on earth who was anything remotely like Sherlock Holmes, and some of these cases could only have been solved by one man.

By the time Greg left, with the box of things to give to John, he merely wished Anderson a good day, and tried to remember that the detective was dead.

But then he'd seen the paper outside.

Greg read the newspaper every day, and he knew what was on the back of that day's papers, every single one of them. There was no paper that had _that_ headline on the back page, and it was clear that it had been manipulated. The person reading the newspaper lowered it, folded it, tucked it up under their arm and walked off. It was a man who was wearing deceptively smart clothes, but their sickly pallor and unshaven appearance conveyed their true identity. Greg recognised him as one of Sherlock's Homeless Network, and it was at this point that he had to admit that something strange was going on.

After he dropped the box off at John's new house, he would ask Mycroft what was going on. Mycroft would know.

And so, after he had left the bright house that John shared with Mary – and a rather awkward encounter with one of the men he had once considered one of his best friends – he headed straight for the one place he knew his boyfriend would be at this time of day: the Diogenes Club.

Greg wasn't sure how – though he liked to imagine that there was some form of carrier pigeon message system within the club – but Mycroft had been informed of his presence almost immediately after his arrival, and the Detective Inspector was summoned to one of the more private rooms, one where the inhabitants were allowed to talk.

Once the door had been closed, and they had greeted each other, Greg scratched the back of his neck and thought of how to phrase his inquiry.

"Something is bothering you, Gregory," Mycroft said as he leaned back against the desk. "What is it?"

Greg cleared his throat, his eyes fixed on the richly carpeted floor rather than at the man standing before him. "Uh… well, I met with Anderson today."

"Ah, the conspiracy theorist," Mycroft chuckled, nodding for Greg to continue.

Greg shot him a reproachful look that he knew would have got him killed had he been anyone else – although he thought that maybe Sherlock could have got away with giving Mycroft a look like that – and carried on with his narrative.

"I know it's silly, but…" He sighed exasperatedly and looked Mycroft in the eye. "Sherlock _is_ dead, right?"

A moment passed in silence, Mycroft merely stared at him as though weighing up his options of what to say. "My brother…" he began slowly, "is dead."

Mycroft Holmes was probably the best liar in the world; he had to be, given his job – it would never be useful if he accidentally blabbed the secrets of the nation to some random who just happened to ask the right questions. Yet, there was something about how he said that sentence that just didn't ring true; Mycroft didn't have many tells, but Greg had been with him long enough to know most of them when he saw them.

"Mycroft," Greg began, taking a step closer. "He _is_, isn't he?"

"Of course he is," Mycroft huffed, seemingly slightly irritated that Greg didn't believe him. "Why would I lie about that?"

"Well, you see, that's what I don't get. But there are strange things happening in Europe, and it looks an awful lot like Sherlock's the one behind them. Not to mention the message that was sent to me via the headline on the back of a newspaper this afternoon."

For a moment, Mycroft's eyes flashed in anger, but it was not directed at either Greg or himself. There was a third person involved in this, and Greg thought that he knew who it was.

"When I found out what had happened, when he jumped, I called you and told you what had happened. And you said that you hadn't found out, you just _knew_. I thought that it was because of some connection, some brotherly affinity that told you when he'd died. But that wasn't it, was it? You knew that he'd jumped because you helped him do it. He faked it, for some reason – which I still want to know – and you helped him."

Mycroft straightened himself up to his full height and looked down at him. "You are never given enough credit. You are capable of some incredible detective work. Sometimes I wonder why you ever needed my brother at all. At times, I was convinced that it was more the case that he, in fact, needed you."

"And what is that supposed to mean?" Greg exclaimed, getting impatient.

"You… are right."

Greg felt winded. It had been eighteen months; eighteen months of grief – all five stages – and of crying, and of screaming, and of wondering what exactly it was that could push one of the most self-loving men in the world to throw himself off of the roof of his second favourite building in London.

Now, it turned out that he _hadn't_ thrown himself off of the roof of his second favourite building in London; or, rather, he had, but he had survived the act, despite leading so many of his friends to believe otherwise. And not only was that the case, but Mycroft – the man who had held him while he cried, and helped him through a pain much worse than that of the disintegration of his marriage – had not only been party to this deception, but had continued it for the entire time that he had thought Sherlock to be dead.

"I thought he was dead."

"I know."

"Why?" he cried, his voice louder than usual and reverberating through the large room, echoing off the walls.

Mycroft waited for the last ghost of Greg's voice to disappear before answering.

"Moriarty needed to be stopped. We planned for months, but in the end we realised that, no matter what happened afterwards, we had to get the two of them on top of that roof. Once they were on the roof, there were thirteen eventualities that could have played out. Each one had a codename. We desperately wanted Lazarus – the fake death scenario – to not be used. Unfortunately, we underestimated Moriarty's desperation to win; we knew that he was willing to risk his life for victory, but not to actually die.

"Yet, this is what he did, and as soon as he put that bullet through the back of his own head, we knew that there was only one option open to us. So Sherlock jumped, and we made it look as though he had died from the fall. He has been in exile for the past eighteen months, searching out the loose ends of Moriarty's network and eliminating them."

"But why couldn't _we_ know that he was alive?"

"If anyone other than those necessary were made aware of the fact that Sherlock Holmes lived, then it could bring his entire mission to an end. Moriarty's network would continue and maybe even get back to its full strength, only this time, it would be under the leadership of someone with whom we have had no prior contact and whom we do not know from Adam. That would be devastating for the entire world, not least for the three people Moriarty had targeted."

"Targeted?" Greg asked, his confusion momentarily making him forget the betrayal of being lied to every day for the past eighteen months.

Mycroft nodded, and pushed himself off of the desk. "Moriarty had three snipers while Sherlock and he met on the roof. They each had their rifles pointing at the three people closest to him: John Watson, Martha Hudson… and you."

"Me?" Greg asked, not quite able to believe it. He was one of the three people who had been closest to Sherlock Holmes, who _was_ closest to Sherlock Holmes?

"Yes. You, of course, understand that your loss would not merely devastate the youngest Holmes brother."

"Oh!" Greg chuckled humourlessly, stepping back a little. "That's nice. At least I matter to _you_, that makes everything alright."

"Gregory…" Mycroft began, trying to take a step forward as pain flashed through his eyes, but Greg held up a hand to stop him.

"No. Don't. You lied to me every day for eighteen months, and you watched me grieve for one of my best friends, knowing full well that he wasn't even dead."

He backed away until he almost reached the door. To his credit, Mycroft didn't try and get any closer to him.

"I'm sorry," the politician said quietly.

"So am I."

With that, Greg turned away and left.

Yes, it had been a very bad day indeed.


	8. In Which There is No Happy Ending

**Warnings:** Reference to drinking and alcoholism, spoilers for series 3 (The Empty Hearse and The Sign of Three)

**Disclaimer: Don't own Sherlock**

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Chapter 8 – In Which There is No Happy Ending

Greg Lestrade was having a bad day.

He shouldn't have been; after all, weddings were supposed to be happy occasions. Yet even in the festivities of John and Mary's nuptials, he couldn't quite bring himself to be as joyous as he should have been.

It had been six months since Sherlock returned, and Greg had at least capitulated to the bastard enough to act surprised when he had shown up once again. It hadn't been as hard as he had first thought it would when he discovered that the detective really was alive after all; reappearing to Greg in some creepy underpass was not what he had been expecting, but then again, the man was a drama queen.

It had been nine months since that fateful day in the Diogenes Club, when Greg's second long-term relationship had ended. Hadn't people had more than that by the time they reached his age? Maybe he and Louise had split too late; there was no time for him to have had all of the relationships that he wanted to have. It was a thought that had struck him on the head one day about a week after he had broken up with Mycroft – rather rudely, one might say – and had stayed with him ever since.

It was on that day, nine months before the wedding, that he had first looked at the bottle of scotch in his fridge that he had been saving for a special occasion – and, maybe it had been far too early on his part to think that it would be possible, but a part of him had been hoping that that special occasion would be his engagement to the man he had got together with on the sofa after his first marriage disintegrated – and decided that it had sat there, idle, long enough.

Greg hadn't touched a drop of alcohol since downing all that whiskey on the night that Louise had lied to him about her whereabouts. He had a rather complicated relationship with the intoxicating substance, to the point where he knew that he really shouldn't be drinking it at all. He had met John's sister, who had a real problem, and he hoped that he wasn't as bad as she was, but there was still a small voice in the back of his head that told him that he wasn't as far off as he might hope.

At that moment in time, he hadn't really cared about how his starting drinking again might be perceived by those around him. Mycroft was the only one who had really noticed anything about him anyway by this point, and he wasn't around anymore to rebuke him for downing an entire bottle of scotch in a single evening. So he had snatched the bottle from the fridge, and done just that.

It had been a slippery slope since then, and by the happy day of the wedding, he knew that he was in trouble. He wasn't quite at the pouring-beer-on-his-cornflakes stage, but he feared that that is exactly what would start happening if he didn't stop soon. His only hope was to get over this breakup as soon as possible, which he really should have done by now, seeing as it had happened nine months ago. It had taken him a few mere weeks to get over the ending of his marriage, but Mycroft was proving a much more resilient heartache.

Maybe he had loved Mycroft more than Louise…

He shoved the thought away with another swig of champagne. It tasted awful – all alcohol did – but it didn't matter what it tasted like as long as it made him feel a little better. He had found that it hadn't had that effect on him yet, but he was determined to keep drinking until it did.

For now, he was happy with the placebo.

~{bad-day}~

Mycroft Holmes was having a bad day.

He had been invited to the wedding, but he had known from the moment that Sherlock had mentioned it to him that he wouldn't be in attendance. He was just the best man's brother, who was he to join in such festivities? After all, Greg would be there, and he couldn't deal with that.

Mycroft had never before let such strong emotions hold him captive before. He thought that he could master them, tame them, control them, rather than the other way around. He had become determined to do so when he had first noticed their presence, but it would seem that he was not invincible. He was just as susceptible to heartbreak as any other human being on the planet.

How dull.

He had been unaware of just how much it would hurt when he had realised that his relationship was over. It was the first relationship he had ever had; he had never had time for any others – not that he had had time for this one, but this one was different, he had _made_ time. Not that he had ever had a desire for such a thing before, of course, but even so, he was surprised to find himself woefully unprepared.

Being unprepared was not something he often experienced, and with good reason.

As things got better with practice, upon entering a relationship he had steeled himself for messing up. He didn't enjoy messing up, but he had accepted that it was nevertheless inevitable, and could only hope that Greg would understand and forgive him his shortcomings. That he had was something that Mycroft knew he would be ever grateful for.

The breaking point of the wonderful time that they had spent together came in a form that Mycroft had not anticipated. After all, when they had got together, he had not known which of the plans that would come to pass once Sherlock and Moriarty got on top of the roof, and he had hoped beyond hope that it wouldn't come to Lazarus. Yet it had been out of his hands, and he watched his brother fall on CCTV from miles away, for some reason his brain not able to comprehend that it was all fake, a magic trick. He could not see the large blue crash mat that had been assembled underneath him, and a malevolent voice in the back of his mind was screaming at him that he was watching his brother really plummet to his death.

It had never been a part of the plan for anyone to find out about Sherlock's survival until the time was right, but even the Holmes boys hadn't counted on Anderson's endless theories and hypotheses. It was bound to attract attention, and once he realised that Greg had deduced – for he, too, was capable of such things – that Sherlock was alive, he had known that it was over. It had been too good to last. Nothing that good would ever have been able to last. Not for him, anyway.

It had been a week after the breakup that he had got his treadmill out of the shed. He ran every day when he was at home, as fast and as far as he could last before his entire body ached and he had the confidence to trust that he had worn himself out sufficiently to not remember any of his dreams; dreams that spoke of love lost and those times when he had been happier than any other in living memory.

He opted not to go to the wedding.

His treadmill was there for him instead.


End file.
